It’s not wildly original, but it’s steely and stylish, and as a story it has a ruthless streak to it that’s weirdly appealing.

Depardieu and Cornillac's sibling rivalry, which segues between mostly verbal smackdowns and liquored-up bursts of merriment, is beautifully observed, as is the relationship between the detective and his devoted wife (the wonderful Marie Bunel). The thriller stuff, by comparison, is just a lot of perfunctory deadweight.

This is a pleasant but overgenerous and predictable film, so eager to embrace the good in people that it never fully succeeds as drama.

An "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" retread told from a postoccupation vantage point, this adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s YA romance novel unfolds in a dystopian future when alien parasites have nearly won the battle for Earth.

The supporting cast is flawless, with a special mention owed to Brad Dourif as poor, doomed Billy Bibbit. But the script lacks the woozy, otherworldly subtlety of Kesey’s book, relying instead on pop psychology and finger-pointing: once again, it turns out women are to blame for pretty much everything.

These artists are risking everything by playing Western-influenced music; that Ghobadi cheapens and cheeses up their subversion with Hollywood tricks makes for a seriously bitter irony.

As Farhadi casts his roving, distracted eye over this unhappy community, sharing his story in a choppy, documentary style, it ends up feeling like a curiously detached exercise, more academic than wholly satisfying.

Whether he’s delivering a monologue about anal beads or singing ‘The Hokey Cokey’ while sledgehammering a pool table, Cage’s performance is wildly in sync with Brian Taylor’s over-caffeinated direction.

The problem is, Lewis Tan’s cardboard hero Cole (new to the game lore) is deathly dull. As are the rest of the amorphous blob of goodies, including United States Special Forces soldiers Jax (Mehcad Brooks) and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee).

Yet after the actorcentric fireworks of Cianfrance’s "Blue Valentine" (2010), it’s impressive to see him going after a wider sociopolitical scope, one that would have been better served by a less repetitive structure.

For 
the most part, you’re in the hands of a capable lunatic who has a tale to tell.

Damon and Bale are unfailingly enjoyable company to be among, steering the psychology away from alpha-male dominance to something more complex and occasionally mystical.

With no Ghibli film in the offing (although My Neighbor Totoro is getting a UK cinema re-release in August), The Imaginary is an often delightful way to fill the anime gap.

The Aatsinki siblings never rise past a kind of rotely anonymous masculinity, and overall the film tends to lull rather than engage the senses.

A too-pat ending also spoils Rubberneck (shorter: Mommy made me do it!), though it doesn’t ruin the steely pleasures of the filmmaking.

The navel-gazing artist class that gave Williamsburg its character (now more of a marketable “brand”) has in Friedrich both a vigorous defender and, it must be said, something close to an angry parody of itself.

With its engaging story, energetic soundtrack and slick production values, Nerve is an easy watch for restless young minds.

In the cold light of day, it must be admitted that Landis leans too heavily on the shock effects provided by Rick Baker's lycanthropic transformation make-up.

Unlike a great Morris film such as "Gates of Heaven" or "Mr. Death," where the quirks of character feel connected to a larger, profoundly insightful vision of humanity, Tabloid never gets beyond its idiosyncratic surface.

Genre fans will admire the ceaseless mayhem of this rare Indian entry to the carnage canon. It’s not The Raid, or even this year’s Monkey Man, but it’s got some slick moves of its own.

The film’s themes of inclusion, family and multiculturalism may be broadly delivered, but they definitely don’t all miss the mark.

Circo zeroes in on the interpersonal strife within this collapsing clan - an angle that only occasionally lifts the film above confessional exotica.

Atrociously directed and full of groan-making jokes, but the cast are having such a good time that it's difficult not to respond in a similar way.

Director Ted Demme (Jonathan's nephew) never applies the scalpel where a blunt instrument will do, and the screenplay by Richard LaGravenese and Marie Weiss does become a mite repetitive. Nevertheless the film has a caustic edge and energy which keeps the laughs flowing.

It’s exciting to see this underground scene finding an outlet on screen. As an exploration of contemporary youth culture, masculinity, identity and sexuality, as well as life at the margins, VS. is topical and energising.

Director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) can do this stuff with his eyes closed, and sometimes it feels like he might be doing that as the plot chugs from London to Berlin and secrets are duly uncovered. But there’s enough visual flair to elevate things above standard genre fare.

Oddly, the comedy of this partnership is dialled down, and the film’s few wisecracks don’t really land. It’s adventure, though, that everyone really wants from an Indiana Jones movie, and on that front it delivers and then some by prising open the old box of tricks and performing them one-by-one with care and respect. Add to that the rousing familiarity of John Williams’s score, and it all amounts to a comforting if not especially challenging reboot.

It is shamelessly sentimental, and could well send the hardboiled home to kick the cat.

It's hamstrung by leaden dialogue and the motley international cast - Python and the Grail are never that far away - but it's admirably unsentimental and by no means stupid.

In the absence of real substance, Donaldson's stylish direction borders on the self-conscious, though cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr captures images of startling richness and clarity.

Though often funny, there’s a reverse narcissism in the way Karpovsky wallows in his “character’s” off-putting flaws.

Berlinger is fully invested here, but a little distance might have helped.

As a take on a very difficult topic, made even more so by current events, this is admirable and handsomely executed, but it’s rather like walking through a museum exhibition: it’s packed with fascinating detail, but doesn’t let you close enough to touch it.

The familiarity of the high-armour shoot-outs and sfx-assisted set-pieces make most of this sequel feel surprisingly low-tech. Not bad entertainment, though.

Reisz's direction is panoramic, with aspirations towards the epic, when it should have been closer in and faster. The result is a highly melodramatic and romantic film, for all the veneer of disillusion, whose weighty statement too often swamps the potentially strong suspense.

Redemptively, the cast goes a long way: Jean Desailly is perfect as a jowly literary celeb deep in midlife crisis, while the aloof Françoise Dorléac is magnetic as his airline stewardess and all-too-scrutable love object.

As with 1999’s deceptively deep South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut and, more recently, The Lego Movie, the script works hard to invest its scenario with an existential and political dimension, crudely but effectively expressed.

Inna de Yard becomes more like a concert movie, with a spine of cultural history, than a narrative documentary.

The movie's mundane account of moving on is ultimately more gripping than its wooden metaphors.

Essential, if artless, baseball exposé.

The dueling dirty tricks zing half the time.... But subplots involving naive volunteers getting their hearts broken feel like strands from a less ambitious movie.

Long Shot confirms that achieving one's goals is rarely possible without the staunch support of others.

As an American fighting with the partisans in the Spanish Civil War, Cooper makes a perfect Hemingway hero, robust and romantic in equal measures. Falling in love with Ingrid Bergman's peasant guerilla makes a lot of sense too, but the film's a mess dramatically. Wood approaches the material with kid gloves, when Hemingway was always a bare-knuckle fighter.

Sure to be a cult classic, it’s quite literally cuckoo – and often gloriously so.

Writer-director Tariq Tapa-who shot much of this vérité-style film by himself-does a beautiful job attuning us to Dilawar's drifting routine, but what's especially striking is how he gives equal weight to the supporting characters.

The film was rushed out to capitalise on its predecessor, with none of the subtext, but the animation is up to scratch, the action and direction efficient, and there is a nice melancholy to Denham’s regret for his previous conduct, which aptly prolongs the mournfulness of the original’s ending.

Within this spare plot, Sembene raises issues of obvious pertinence to modern Senegal, such as the tension between spiritual and temporal power, Princess Dior's renunciation of her role of victim to take decisive action, and village leaders who are only too willing to betray their Africanness to maintain the status quo.

While some of the supernatural stuff about witch-doctors and Mojo dolls is a bit daft, Holland's sure handling of the suspense and shock moments lends the film a sharp and scary edge.

There are powerful and enlightening scenes, and there’s a catchy energy to the battlefield action. But the immediacy and credibility of the women’s mission feels compromised by one-too-many corny moments, unconvincing dialogue and a sense of uncertainty on Husson’s part over whether she wants to take a poetic or realist approach to her tale.

The director manages mostly to avoid the enormous maudlin pitfalls of his material, at least until the over-extended final scene. As usual with Eastwood, little is overstated - and the accent is on humour.

Murder by Death is entertaining enough, even though the joke wears a little thin.

The second part in the ‘Harry Potter’ spin-off provides twists and glorious visuals, but has too much plot to truly soar. These beasts are overburdened.

No new ground is broken, and viewers will, not unpleasantly, get everything they expect. It’s apparently morning in America again.

Once again Schatzberg proves himself a strong director of actors, but keeps the film within the safe confines of semi-sophisticated Adult Entertainment.

Harrison Ford brings his gruff charisma but this man-and-CG-dog adventure gets a bit lost in uncanine-y valley.

When the movie keeps its focus on retribution and Rambo-esque ambushes, however, this slice of Ozploitation doles out grind-house pleasures by the dozens.

Only Dissolution's divine climax feels truly poetic. Having the stamina to not break down on the journey to that moment is half the battle.

Swooning but shallow.

What begins as gritty realism ends up as the usual made-for-cable melodramatics—an apple that’s always better left unbitten.

2024’s Mean Girls needed to be loud, full-throated and unashamed to steal the original’s glittering plastic tiara: instead, it’s an enjoyable exercise in nostalgia that won’t win too many superfans of its own.

The metafriction between these classic dupes and today's idiots chafes uneasily.

No one would claim that director Lance Daly delivers an Emerald Isle version of "The Spirit of the Beehive," though this scrappy film does have a knack for capturing the elation and confusion of late childhood in their ragged glory.

Only Falco gets beyond being merely a symbol for suburban angst.

You don’t have to be a filmmaker or a festival veteran to appreciate Sophie Letourneur’s tale of three women cruising for dudes at Locarno’s annual cinematic shindig, but trust us: It helps immensely.

La Syndicaliste is a weird footnote to Huppert’s long career, one that feels hampered by its ‘true story’ status to the point where it can’t really say much about anything. It’s quietly intriguing. But let’s hope her next outing gives her something that’s really worth dressing up for.

While Stephenson and Brewster’s big-picture attempt to tackle a sociopolitical issue from the most personal of perspectives lacks the state-of-the-nation impact of that landmark doc, it doesn’t mean you won’t feel the pleasure of these kids’ triumphs, the pain of their tragedies or the pressures of ambition, affecting parents as much as students.

The more that fright-flick conventions take over, the more the movie's recognizable and resonant human fears are dulled.

The question lingers as the movie comes to its triumphant body-swapping close: Is this a pro-environment parable or a prophecy of virtual realities yet to come? Cameron's new world may very well be a verdant Matrix.

You sense the Demme-esque working-class comedy that might have been.

Although Fessenden does fine work shooting his equivalent of Lifeboat, the movie’s surface is often rough. Yet the title doesn’t just refer to what lurks in the lake’s still water. It’s a guide to where Beneath’s substance lies, the acid heart inside its plastic chest.

While the weight of Roeg's success is usually stylistic, this is more of a harkback to the cosmic scale of The Man Who Fell to Earth, with enormous themes streaming through a strange tale.

Heroically, Double Tap’s new actors, rare though they are, save it from being completely brain-dead.

Dree Hemingway, daughter of Mariel, commits to some unnecessary nudity, but also impresses with her subtlety.

Finding positive manifestations for mass groups of men marching through cities in identical clothing is no mean feat, but you’ll walk away from Ultras with a new understanding of a misunderstood phenomenon.

Never quite shakes its sitcom-ish setup. The director alternates incident-laden storytelling with penetrating character moments that her terrific cast acts to the fullest.

Even those who aren’t well-versed in the-’hood-always-wins dramas can see what’s coming. So it’s to newcomer Sally El Hosaini’s credit that she embeds a tangible, lived-in sense of the region’s diaspora community and urban criminal underbelly (wagwan, near-indecipherable East End patois!) that’s leagues away from anthropological fetishizing.

A rare Chilean film that doesn’t mention either the Allende or Pinochet regimes, Violeta Went to Heaven is a love letter to a lost 20th-century goddess. It’s hard to resist her.

There's lots of volume in these tunes--the soundtrack is killer--and at least everyone gets their rocks off.

It’s not quite Roman Holiday, but it’s got a charm of its own.

The question posed by the title of Matthew Cooke’s documentary seems to have a simple answer: Sell drugs. Lots of them. But this dope dealers’ DIY manifesto isn’t quite the illustrated instruction manual it sardonically promises to be, as Cooke talks to many a former pusher, from legendary kingpin “Freeway” Rick Ross to small-timer 50 Cent.

Not entirely successful, but still an imaginative and ambitious attempt to combine historical speculation, conspiracy thriller, and the world of Conan Doyle.

The extreme variance of style and scrutability makes for wildly disorienting viewing.

The scenes of the film’s exuberant, frizzy-haired protagonist wandering Naples and revisiting old haunts, however, seem much more unfocused—a ramshackle search for insights into the man’s art and life that rarely come. The instruments are in tune, but the rhythm is off.

Unfortunately for us, Dern — only seen in flashback — isn’t the main character.

The most radical observation Late Night makes concerns the extreme maleness of showbiz that turns women into rivals. But the film brushes over this insight and ultimately falls short of even its more modest intentions.

A fascinating though not wholly successful fusion of cinéma-vérité and political radicalism.

Played as broad, noisy black farce, the film is about the deception of politics and heroism, dog-eat-dog morals and the propensity for violence, but one can't help thinking that behind the sometimes sensational apocalyptic imagery, there's less here than meets the eye.

The first-person recollections of Nanking’s survivors are as uncommonly wrenching as their captors were brutally thorough.

Hopper keeps things light and off-the-cuff, allowing his performers free rein - sometimes too much, as in the case of the screechy and shrill Farrell - to explore grim territory without falling into heavy-handedness.

As games go, this one’s a little too easy to outfox, but it’s worth playing if you need a quick diversion, or if the chess moves of The Favourite felt overly vicious—Ready or Not is pure checkers.

While individual interviews, pop-video parodies and album titles hit the mark, the film as a whole is insufficiently clear-cut in its satire of the bands' dubious antics and attitudes.

Swaddled with a lacquer of nostalgia that passes for cultural insight, this one-night-in-sweatpants drama will make you yearn for a moratorium on teen movies-at least ones so aggressively dewy-eyed.

The mix of comedy, '90s sensibility, and swashbuckling action is more hit than miss, even if the overall effect is rather slapdash. Spirited, irreverent stuff, but not for those who like their myths kept sacred.

Clangorous and nonsensical, the fifth installment of the toys-to-world-saviors franchise still has a spark of grandeur that could only come from one director.

Eileen feels like a less-than-daring portrait of obsession.

Flemyng's direction is efficient if lacking in real flair, but Burnett Guffey's crisp camera-work, the taut plotting, and the generally high standard of the performances make for a pleasing, if undemanding modern noir thriller in the tradition of The Killing and The Asphalt Jungle.

Still, cumbersome plotting aside, there’s enough gory mayhem and genuine zingers to make Deadpool & Wolverine a fun ride in a packed and up-for-it cinema.

As with his first directorial effort, the ace meta-horror The Cabin in the Woods, Goddard has a blast toying with genre expectations, although here the payoff is a lot less satisfying.